Lucasfilm Animation recently brought one of the world’s most successful movie franchises, Star Wars, onto a new platform as a 3D animated television series. With some of the most devoted and obsessive fans in the universe, the technical crew of the Star Wars: The Clone Wars television series had to ensure that the meticulous attention to detail of die-hard Star Wars fans was replicated in the production aspect of the animation, lest the most minute glitch return to haunt them.
On many occasions during the production of the Star Wars: The Clone Wars television series, it is likely that supervising director Dave Filoni frequently fantasised about having a clone army of his own to command.
Conquering the plethora of tasks that confronted technical staff during the show’s creation is definitely a feat worthy of such a force. But in the real world, without the assistance of clones, droids, or super-intelligent beings, it was the hard work of regular humans that got the job done, with a little help from some of the most advanced CGI and animation technology in the market.
Production of the 3D animated series began in 2005, following the release of Star Wars episode III: Revenge of the Sith, and was finally brought to the Middle East via Cartoon Network in February this year. The unique appearance and stylised design of the television series is indicative of the tremendous amount of man-hours and technological expertise that were applied to produce more than 30 episodes of the series.
Broad-scale collaboration between character designers, storyboard artists, animators, lighting designers and the hundreds of players involved in the production process was the key to achieving the visually-slick appearance of this animated adaptation of Star Wars.
While internal collaboration at Lucasfilm Animation (a division of Lucasfilm) was essential, the spirit of cooperation was also extended outside the production house, to reach other contributors to the series, such as animation specialists CGCG and episodic directors who helped to bring different visual styles to the show.
One example of this is Atsushi Takeuchi at Production I.G in Japan, who was recruited as an episodic director to bring an anime influence to the series.
“The way we split up the production was that the story, design and the layout were done in California, and then all of the shot production happened overseas in Singapore and Taipei, and then came back to California for post production,” says Andrew Harris, CG and lighting supervisor at Lucasfilm Animation.
Episodes were visually adjusted throughout the production process and frames were altered post-rendering in order to ensure the creation of the “illustrative stylisation” the crew was attempting to reproduce, based on Ralph McQuarrie’s original 1970s Star Wars concept art.
Under the guidance of George Lucas, executive producer, and Dave Filoni, supervising director, each frame of footage was carefully scrutinised – or “noodled” – before moving on to the next stage of production, Harris tells fans via the show’s website.
“When the episode is completely finished, we go through a process called colour crafting,” explains Harris.
“When George Lucas had been very specific about how he wanted something to look, we could use this process to change the time of day and the overall look of the episode.
For the production of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Lucasfilm Animation employed multiple riggers to fulfill this task, highlighting its importance. Riggers play an integral role in any modern animation, particularly in this instance, with different movement systems being required for a multitude of creatures, machines and humanoids.
Unnecessary in the cardboard cutout and stop motion animations of old, the importance of rigging within animated production will continue to grow unless a sudden reversion to traditional animation occurs – a scenario that in this case seems very unlikely, given the history of Star Wars’ pioneering role in visual effects creation over the past four decades.
“Even after we had finished rendering it, we had that last opportunity to go back and add some finesse to the appearance, which helped to capture the illustrative appearance of the show.”
The process of step-by-step evolution and review of animated material in a big budget 3D production is always important, and in this instance, staff were designated to extremely specific roles in the production process from the animation’s 2D visual beginnings to its final 3D appearance. Each stage of the production process would see something added to the product while also serving as a reviewing station for the preceding steps.
Storyboarding for the animated series was conducted in both 2D and 3D formats – with further collaboration between both 2D and 3D storyboard artists under the guidance of the series directors. 3D storyboard artists at Lucasfilms Animation were handed either a script or a 2D storyboard to turn into a crude dynamic moving picture to provide a foundation for later stages in the animation process.
Rather like a delicate house of cards, the production team was structured in such a way that the work of one was dependent on the performance of another. In order for animators to perform their roles at maximum effectiveness, those involved in the early stages of production must ensure that attention to detail has been met despite various opportunities for ironing out minor glitches in the latter stages of the show’s development.
Staff say lighting was another key focus in the creation of the series from the outset. Lighting designers and concept artists took countless storyboards and renders to add light-related colour and effects to the scenes. This resulted in some fantastic strong and soft light throughout the series to illuminate or darken certain planets, settings and scenes.
With hundreds of eyes scrutinising every frame and shot, quality control at every stage during the production process was inevitable considering the passion of the technical staff working on Star Wars: The Clone Wars, many of whom are self-confessed Star Wars tragics.
Since the groundbreaking release of the original Star Wars film, visual effects and graphics technology has moved into a new world. But now – like then – Star Wars continues to push the boundaries and set new limits for what can be achieved in the realm of visual possibilities. Benjamin Huber, lighting and compositing lead on the animation project, sums up this point extremely well in his video address to fans of Star Wars: The Clone Wars.
“In the old days you used to build huge sets and mimic shots, but nowadays we’re doing all this digitally,” he says.
“We are able to create planets, buildings, nebulas and cities, so it’s an immense amount of creative power we have just making all this stuff up. We are drawing from the resources of thirty years of visual effects and animation history.”
With armoured clones, complex creatures, space ships and an array of droids, including the heterogeneous robot, General Grievous, the job of Darren Marshall, maquette sculptor for the series, was definitely not an easy one.
Although he phrases his role as simply as turning a “2D drawing into a 3D maquette so you can actually see what the design will look like in 3D,” he admits on the Star Wars website, that there were some challenges with sculpting certain characters in the show – in particular, the famed Jedi knights.
“The heroes are always the difficult ones to do, because they have to be really good looking, whereas the villains are quite easy because they have very severe shapes and proportions. Duku for example, has a really pointy chin that looks like a dagger and Palpatine has a series of deep-channeled grooves and wrinkles.”
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